I understand how you feel. As UT pointed out our military is doing it's best to minimize civilian casulties. But the fact remains that we are calling this a war for a reason. In war no one is safe, yes I know that includes myself, my friends and my family.
The fact is that when we started anyone with any sense braced for serious and numerous terroist actions.Frankly, I'm shocked that we haven't seen more than a few anthrax scares. The rules of war never preclude civilians getting killed. It's sad, and the US is trying to reach a higher standard on this. We're just not there yet.

Let me be plain, I have a four year old daughter. When I look at her I know that an Al-Queda terrorist with a crop duster and a suit case full of disease could kill her and everyone else in the city tomorrow. I also know that individual would truly believe her death (as an infidel) would get him a free trip to heaven. This is why action of some sort is necessary. My heart goes out to the inoccent victims of our attacks. Again, I simply choose to believe that our military is acting from the best information it has, and is making every attemt to minimize casulties. I choose to believe that George really does have a case against Bin Laden.

I haven't dismissed that someone else might have done it, nor have I dismissed that Bin Laden would do worse should he have the opportunity. This man and these people want you, me and our children dead. Our actions are in self-defense. Yes it's brutal and has killed innocents, but it's the best we can manage. If you have a better idea then step up. If not understand then understand that given a choice between leaving my daughter in (even very minimal) danger or letting the neighbors of murderers (and yes even their kids) die I will choose my daughter every time. If this makes me a monster than so be it. If you have a child look that child in the eye and then explain why inaction is acceptable.

Let's just hope and pray that in the future we can do better.

Spare me. That interview was pathetic. The kid is 18. The interview does nothing to raise doubt. What's he going to do, say "Oh, yeah, my Dad ran the whole show?"
Nobody who has seen the evidence has disputed the conclusion. That includes a scrutload of Congresscritters and foreign heads of state. Somehow I trust Tony Blair more than binLaden's kid.
No, it means they support terrorists.
.
There's nothing to negotiate, nor any reason to compromise. A negotiation that opens with the death of six thousand civilians isn't a negotiation, it's war.
Grow up. The Taliban sponsors bombing *our* country. Repeatedly.
These scum are already under indictment for the last couple of times they did it.You seriously need to look up the definition of terrorism. It shouldn't take a genius to understand why it doesn't apply.
*Any* military action is going to kill civilians, especially when the combatants make a point of hiding in a civilian population deliberately in order to cause civilian casualties and then pump them for propiganda value, in the hopes that folks like yourself will call for us to slack off on them. It's reprehensible.

civilians
 

I think the civilian casualties are pretty light on their side compared to what they have been on our side.

We didn't want this war. We would have been perfectly happy to have had Sept. 11 be just another day, and not attack Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, our hand has been forced. You can't waltz into our biggest city, blow down the biggest buildings with everyone inside, and walk away thinking nothing will happen. We HAVE to fight now.

The Taliban know that civilian casualties make great propaganda. If they themselves wanted to reduce this, they could move their forces out of the cities into neutral territory. We would never attack a city of just civilians any more than we'd bomb a refugee camp.

Why don't the Taliban do this? They know it would be suicide. If we know a site is just Taliban fighters, we would immediately strike there. They know that by mixing themselves into the civilian population we won't attack as fiercely, we'll have to be very careful.

They are using their own civilians as human shields, just as Iraq did in the Gulf War. They are also using Islam as a shield, sleeping in their mosques at night, because they know that blown-up mosques also make great propaganda and we won't hit them there.

Cowards.

Re: civilians
 

This war is older than a lot of people would like to think. For instance, we've (indirectly) killed a half million kids in Iraq though U.N. sanctions. (yes, I know a lot of you don't think that's relavent, but if the terrorists do, and Osama bin Laden has said he does, I think it's very relevant)
By their count, the U.S. is directly and indirectly responsible for millions of Islamic deaths over the past few decades. The terrorists aren't the only ones holding the U.S. responsible; human rights groups have been on our back for years about it. To people on that side of the world, the U.S. is not a "beacon of freedom" at all.Yes, we must do something. Yes, someone must pay. But we aren't exactly killing Osama with these bombings! I'm all for the covert operations. I wish they'd tell us about it, but if they want to go in silent-ninja style and take out the bad guys I'm all for it. But dropping cluster bombs over a populated city? C'mon! Cluster bombs are thought to miss their targets up to 60% of the time, and frequently don't explode on impact (since they are more powerful than landmines, a reigion full of these (like Kosovo after our peacekeeping effort there) is quite dangerous). Each bomb contains 150 smaller bombs, and statistically between 5% and 12% of them don't explode on impact. So, even if these bombs are only targeted at military convoys as claimed, each will leave behind several landmines (unexploded pieces from cluster bombs) on publicly traveled roads! Civilian deaths, both immediate and delayed, are inevitable when this kind of weapon is used.

OK, I'm taking Maggie's bait and actually looking up terrorism:

• Terrorism n. The unlawful use or threatened use of force or violence by a person or an organized group against people or property with the intention of intimidating or coercing societies or governments, often for ideological or political reasons.

The U.S. Military, an organized group, is using both force and violence against people and property with the intention of coercing a government to extradite someone. Our reasons are certainly political; and I would say our ideological differences certainly have come into play as well. All that leaves is the unlawfull part. What laws apply? I'm sure that by local laws they would consider our bombings unlawfull; by our laws killing people is unlawfull. But, as is always pointed out, people die in war. Thats just how it is.

If we can say our murder of innocent's is not a criminal act, because our leaders have declared a war (on 'evil' in general), how can we deem the WTC bombings a criminal act? They told us we were at war, after all! If war makes murder legal, then anyone the president deems evil is fair game!
(no, I just can't get over GWB's War-on-Evil speech. Especially coming from a president who is so judemental he doesn't consider Athiests citizens; THIS is the man who determines who is evil enough to be murdered by the most powerfull military in the world?)

Naturally, I think that the WTC attack was criminal. I just can't condem it without simultaneously condeming other murder of innocents. I didn't personally know anyone who died in WTC; to me the lives lost in New York are no more or less a tragedy than the people who are dying right now accross the world under U.S. bombs.I was unaware the Taliban had bombed our country. Could you elaborate? Also, I'd love to see some background on joe's claim that they are, as Iraq did in the Gulf War, using civilians as a shield. I don't know if thats true; I certainly hadn't heard that.

Also, joe: I wouldn't call someone a coward for sleeping in their chruch because they're worried about getting blown up. How's self-preservation cowardly?

Again, I realize that we have to do SOMETHING. I just don't think what were doing is effective OR morally acceptable. Can you imagine the Taliban saying "Stop! We've had enough! You can have Osama!"? Sure, it's possible, I just don't think it's very likely. So if not that, what is our goal? When will the airstrikes be done and over with?

Whit, you say you choose your daughter's saftey over the innocent neighbors of terrorists. I'm glad to hear it. But what if these attacks only fuel the terrorists' fire? We can't possibly kill all the terrorists; thats about as likely as the drug war resulting in zero domestic drug use. And the remaining terrorists (I think most will remain after this) will now have one more reason to hate America.

I try to tell myself that their hatred of the American people is misplaced, that it isn't the american people who behind the injustice in their home; but when we show national support for this war (a war that really ammounts to our own terrorist acts) it makes sense that they view the average american citizen as the enemy.

CNN has made up a list of 6 questions for Osama, and I'm very eager to hear what comes of it. They said that if they don't find his response newsworthy they don't air it; I really hope we get to hear what he says. I think more likely than not, he's guilty; but I still want to hear what the guy has to say.

Setting aside the justification for the bombings on the Taliban, let's talk about our goals, and how we are meeting them with the actions that we are taking.

This fanatical army, from what I understand, is a distributed one. Like as in peer to peer and gnutella. Many different cells or 'nodes' operate independently. There is no central server.

So, just as suing one guy in America for sharing files on gnutella isn't going to stop a guy in Russia from sharing files with a guy in Germany -- So bombing an organization in Afganistan isn't going to stop the machinery of terrorism. You're attacking a single node.

If I bomb Earthlink's headquarters, does the internet stop functioning? Of course not! Lots of people are pissed off at us. If you kill the
"leaders", all the pissed off minions are not going to just go home and eat peanut butter and jelly sandwitches.

Re: Re: civilians
 

I'm not going to bother responding to leif after this posting, because he doesn't seem to have heard much about what's going on, and there's only so much cluelessness I can tolerate. Perhaps he missed the explosions in New York City back on 9/11. Stolen aircraft loaded with jet fuel were used as kamikaze bombs to attack US civilians.

The man financing and directing the operation was described back in August by the Pakistanis and the Russians as the Taliban's de facto defense minister. The Taliban has been on bin Laden's payroll to the tune of $100 million over the last ten years while the Taliban has been under UN embargo for refusing to extradite him. bin Laden countersigns orders issued by Omar. Basically, the spoiled little rich boy has bought himself a country to play commando in.

As for using civilans as a shield, after the ammo dumps in tunnels outside of Faram were bombed, causing secondary explosions for three hours afterward, the Taliban toured the world press though the town, showed them 30 graves and told them 270 civilians had died there.

Although now that the Taliban has almost no aircraft left, we probably won't see many more stoies like these:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
August 15, 2000

Taliban Jets Raid Taloqan, Kill Six Children, Injure Twelve other Civilians

(August 15)-Two Taliban jet fighters carried out air sorties today on Taloqan City at 6:40 pm (Afghanistan Standard Time), dropping a total of four bombs.

Two bombs struck a civilian neighborhood within the city, killing six children and wounding twelve civilians while destroying one house and partially damaging two more. Among those injured, eight were local commuters. Two other bombs landed outside the city.

It is believed that the indiscriminate aerial bombardment, one day after the latest Taliban-Pakistani-bin Laden failure of a military advance on Taloqan, marks a sign of frustration as the enemy has sought to take its revenge by randomly targeting civilian neighborhoods..
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One comment on JuJu's posting:

Not quite true. While the cells are semiautonomous after being dispatched for a mission, their training, command and control and finance are a bit more centralized than that. It's not so much like Gnutella but more like Napster.

well heck then
 

Pull the army out, send in the RIAA!

"In other news today, the Taliban army has been sued for vicarious infringement of human rights by allowing terrorists to operate from within it's borders. The Taliban argue that no such activity takes place, that all operations are legal. The RIAA states that in random samplings of Taliban activity, 99% of activity was terrorist in nature.

In anticipation of the demise of the army, Taliban fringe group activity has risen dramatically recently...."

Re: Re: Re: civilians
 

Hijackers of still uncertain origin crashing our planes into buildings is very different that the Taliban bombing us, which is what you originally claimed. It's possible the Taliban paid for it, but it's just as likely that our old pal Saddam did! (he praised the attacks, after all.) That doesn't change the fact that the Taliban are still cruel facists who have forced their way into power. The Taliban shouldn't be in power, and I can see why people would support fighting them. But our bombs are killing civilians! Read the links above regarding cluster bombs!

I agree with juju's post, but I just hope the RIAA doesn't turn that around and start comparing peer2peer users to terrorist cells. ;-)
It's bad enough with hacking being a terrorist offense now!

Re: Re: Re: civilians
 

Well, I suppose you're right in that it's not an entirely 1-to-1 analogy, but I still think it's an accurate one.

With Napster, if you take out the central server, the networks stops working. This is not the case with al-Quaeda. killing Osama will cause the network to take a hit in organizational efficiency, but the network will still go on. Other members will step up to the plate. Many people have already speculated that if he's taken out, he'll be seen as a martyr and another al-Queda member will take his place.

I've lost the link now, but I read one news article where a "funding" cell was broken up inside the U.S.. Its sole purpose was to provide funding and resources to al-Quaeda. So, i'm sure Osama does provide funding...supposedly he even founded this organization. But I suspect that it's designed to go on without him.

Don't get me wrong...killing him is a good step and we should do it. But this attack is being played out as potentially having a large benefit when in fact it may not.

You guy's seem to be forgetting that these are TRAINED terrorists. They got their training in Bin Laden's camps IN Afganistan. Al-Queda is largely based there and what we have to gain is ending the training in that area. Basicaly forcing them to set-up shop elsewhere. This will take some time and alot of money. George's claim is that as soon as they try to set-up elsewhere we'll use our political influence to get said country to help and chase them out again.

This is all common knowledge. George has stated as much in his speeches.

Simple question: Which is more dangerous, a bunch of untrained psychos full of hate with limited funds or a bunch of well-trained well-funded terrorists with a solid information base?

[replying to juju] I think that particular spin is coming from the public, not public officials or even the media. Every time Bush has talked about terrorism, it has constituted a very long term war, the dead-or-alive retrieval of bin Laden only being one aspect of it.

But since getting their butts kicked seems to be a historically effective approach to terrorists, let us go and kick some butts. Besides, since intelligence is now paying attention, any upsetting the apple cart may cause more of the network to be exposed.

And from a psychological point of view, it should hurt recruitment if nothing else. There's no fun joining a gang when that gang is getting its ass kicked.

And from the sounds of things, not everyone in this organization is driven by religious fanaticism. What was one of the last stops before 9/11? A strip bar, where there was booze drunk and brags laid down. Not model Muslims. Furthermore, there is some evidence that not all the hijackers believed they were on suicide missions.

BTW on those 500,000 Iranian kids who've apparently died - so says the UN - I thought that was the result of diplomatic efforts to stop the possible production of chemical and biological weapons?

When you're dealing with the leadership of a nation, and that leadership does absolutely reprehensible things, what are you going to do? You hate to hurt the people not responsible, but we've only seen MORE trouble from assassinating the two-bit dictators who wreak havoc. If Hussein cared more about 500,000 kids than we did, he would make an effort to re-join the civilized world where diplomacy is how things are done.

Lastly, bin Laden is not really concerned about those kids either. He just wants to bring Persians into the fold by claiming they have complaints and should be warring against the west with him.

No doubt that the US commits human rights violations...the death penalty comes to mind. But it was an accidental strike during a military action. Hence why there wasn't that much complaining regarding the situation after the initial incident.

Quote:

How is it that we can justify killing civilians so eaisily yet be surprised when someone strikes back at our civilians?

It's quite simple really. Military action. We were not battling any country as of September 11, 2001--unless you can really count Iraq. There was no real need to get bin Laden at that point...at least in the eyes of the US Government.

NO ONE wants to see civilians die. Lord knows I don't. And I'm not a big fan of a long-scale war. And I don't think getting bin Laden is going to solve the problem of terrorism. But it will eradicate the US of its most dangerous enemy...and hopefully take out some of the al-Queda network in the process.

Look at it this way as well--we are attacking a barren isolated country that doesn't offer the US jack shit. There's a rarity.

Quote:

and are really just part of the war here at home (public relations). After all, you just used them as justification for a pro-bombing argument. ;-)

I did not say that. It was merely a point. The US was dropping food to Afghanistan before we started the bombing raids. I knew that...and I'm sure a lot of educated Americans knew that as well.

Quote:

I don't mean to ruffle feathers; I've been reading this board for a while now and I like this group! I just think that there isn't ever justification for killing civilians.

Okay, let's take the rationale and apply it to World War II for a minute. Lots and lots of innocent folks were killed. But had we tried to play nice, would Germany and Japan have ever surrendered? It took not one, but TWO nuclear bombs to get Japan to surrender. Was it horrible? Absolutely! Necessary? Yes.

In the end, war is a problem, never a solution. However, even I (the idealistic one) know good and well that you cannot avoid casualties in fighting a battle. Do you think that the US could actually NEGOTIATE with the Taliban? Highly unlikely.

You can't reason with stupid.